Integration of Wide Orbit automation for Radio, Wide Orbit Traffic systems, Sundance Television Automation. GrassValley Video servers, Microsoft Great Plains Accounting.and various other software systems to form an integrated and operational system

My environment is all Windows XP, Vista, and Windows 7computers, which are the nodes that access the shared space in the actual NAS, the shares are set using access rights configured in Active Directory, so pretty much all Windows.

The new NAS came pre-configured with OS and data volumes done, so in my book all I need to do is configure the shares and start bouncing data from the actual NAS, then give users access to it.

My question is, what is the advantage in using the iSCSI Initiator and Microsoft iSCSI Software Target and creating vhd volumes, versus just creating the shares in the configured disk space?

I think you'd only want to go with iSCSI (essentially a SAN, rather than a NAS) if you wanted to set up block storage. Which means hosting a volume accessed by other computers rather than hosting files.

Block storage would be good for hosting the hard drives used by VMs, or if you needed to host a file system that wasn't supported by the device.

For general file storage, you should go with NAS functionality. With iSCSI you're counting on two devices functioning to serve your data, so you have an additional point of failure. So you'd really only want to go iSCSI if you had a compelling reason to do so.

It's worth pointing out that in my experience with iSCSI devices you tend to experience a lot more 'minor failures' than with a normal server/NAS. What I used to see was the Exchange servers at my old company would lose connection to the drives that had the information stores on them. We would just reboot to fix (never bothered to work out if there was some other way to get the iSCSI working again). It always came back up after the reboot. It's the sort of thing where there was always a lot of discussion with the vendor (NetApp) but the problem never went away, and it happened so infrequently it was hard to attempt to fix.

If you go with NAS you shouldn't really have that problem. (Admittedly, I have seen it with external disk shelves on Dell servers as well, but it happened less often...)

I think you'd only want to go with iSCSI (essentially a SAN, rather than a NAS) if you wanted to set up block storage. Which means hosting a volume accessed by other computers rather than hosting files.

Block storage would be good for hosting the hard drives used by VMs, or if you needed to host a file system that wasn't supported by the device.

For general file storage, you should go with NAS functionality. With iSCSI you're counting on two devices functioning to serve your data, so you have an additional point of failure. So you'd really only want to go iSCSI if you had a compelling reason to do so.

It's worth pointing out that in my experience with iSCSI devices you tend to experience a lot more 'minor failures' than with a normal server/NAS. What I used to see was the Exchange servers at my old company would lose connection to the drives that had the information stores on them. We would just reboot to fix (never bothered to work out if there was some other way to get the iSCSI working again). It always came back up after the reboot. It's the sort of thing where there was always a lot of discussion with the vendor (NetApp) but the problem never went away, and it happened so infrequently it was hard to attempt to fix.

If you go with NAS you shouldn't really have that problem. (Admittedly, I have seen it with external disk shelves on Dell servers as well, but it happened less often...)

Thank you for your reply Chris, it is clearing up my question very well. I am thinking because the OS has the iSCSI capability and because in these days it is very common to have virtual machines in the network along with different operating systems, the setup guide includes the iSCSI setup as a normal procedure thinking you will need it, which kind of confused me, I am coming from using SANs with fibre channel, now everybody pushes to acquire them with iSCSI as this technology is cheaper than fibre channel.

My question is, what is the advantage in using the iSCSI Initiator and Microsoft iSCSI Software Target and creating vhd volumes, versus just creating the shares in the configured disk space?

The use of iSCSI would make it a SAN setup rather than a NAS. So the real question is... do you need SAN or NAS? Generally, you always want NAS unless there is no other option (and only NAS if DAS isn't an option and only DAS if local drives are not.)

Thank you Scott! Your reply corroborates what Chris posted and makes perfect sense, agree, if I needed to access non local disk space with the OS, or needing to share disk sace with virtual machines, iSCSI will be the right thing to do, but mi migration is from. A NAS serving a Windows-only network, so NAS is the way to do it.

Also, this is not a response to your original question, but it might be related to an issue that you may run into.... I recently did a conversion myself... When you setup the permissions on Shares especially if you are using it as a NAS and your users connect directly to the shares.. I'm assuming that's what you are planning to do anyway...

On the network shares:

"Network Share" --> properties --> "Security" tab --> Advanced --> select Group from the list --> Change Permissions --> Click "Edit" option. If Delete option is not checked under "Allow", depending on how you setup your permissions, you users may run into an issue working with Office documents, specifically the temp files... Essentially, temp files are created and they stay there, thus locking files on the NAS and you maybe forced to manually unlock the files from using "Share Storage Manager" PCs get stuck on shutdown, stating "logging off" all night and not ever shutting down. I don't know if this applies in your environment, but I would look out for it,. It might save you the headache. Just spoke to a couple of my friends that also have Storage Server 2008 and they had the same exact issue. Hope this helps.

Thank you Scott! Your reply corroborates what Chris posted and makes perfect sense, agree, if I needed to access non local disk space with the OS, or needing to share disk sace with virtual machines, iSCSI will be the right thing to do, but mi migration is from. A NAS serving a Windows-only network, so NAS is the way to do it.

Even sharing with VMs ... NAS is the better way to go. SAN would be for special database access, for example. VMs (outside of HyperV) can do everything with NAS. Pretty much if you say "shared" that means that you want NAS. SAN isn't about sharing, NAS is.

Thank you Scott! Your reply corroborates what Chris posted and makes perfect sense, agree, if I needed to access non local disk space with the OS, or needing to share disk sace with virtual machines, iSCSI will be the right thing to do, but mi migration is from. A NAS serving a Windows-only network, so NAS is the way to do it.

Even sharing with VMs ... NAS is the better way to go. SAN would be for special database access, for example. VMs (outside of HyperV) can do everything with NAS. Pretty much if you say "shared" that means that you want NAS. SAN isn't about sharing, NAS is.

I hear you! In this company we use a couple of SANs for database operation, on those ones at the time of sizing I've preferred using fibre channel, and it was a great option, it has been operating rock solid for 4 years now. Despite the NX3100 is a great machine, I am not shure if I would use it for database serving, maybe for small stuff. I think it is a great option to upgrade the actual NAS.

Also, this is not a response to your original question, but it might be related to an issue that you may run into.... I recently did a conversion myself... When you setup the permissions on Shares especially if you are using it as a NAS and your users connect directly to the shares.. I'm assuming that's what you are planning to do anyway...

On the network shares:

"Network Share" --> properties --> "Security" tab --> Advanced --> select Group from the list --> Change Permissions --> Click "Edit" option. If Delete option is not checked under "Allow", depending on how you setup your permissions, you users may run into an issue working with Office documents, specifically the temp files... Essentially, temp files are created and they stay there, thus locking files on the NAS and you maybe forced to manually unlock the files from using "Share Storage Manager" PCs get stuck on shutdown, stating "logging off" all night and not ever shutting down. I don't know if this applies in your environment, but I would look out for it,. It might save you the headache. Just spoke to a couple of my friends that also have Storage Server 2008 and they had the same exact issue. Hope this helps.

Are you using Active Directory? The actual NAS is running Windows 2003 Enterprise, the machine is a member of the domain, and never had those problems, I am wondering if you issue is related to properly propagate AD rights on the shares.

Thank you Scott! Your reply corroborates what Chris posted and makes perfect sense, agree, if I needed to access non local disk space with the OS, or needing to share disk sace with virtual machines, iSCSI will be the right thing to do, but mi migration is from. A NAS serving a Windows-only network, so NAS is the way to do it.

Even sharing with VMs ... NAS is the better way to go. SAN would be for special database access, for example. VMs (outside of HyperV) can do everything with NAS. Pretty much if you say "shared" that means that you want NAS. SAN isn't about sharing, NAS is.

I hear you! In this company we use a couple of SANs for database operation, on those ones at the time of sizing I've preferred using fibre channel, and it was a great option, it has been operating rock solid for 4 years now. Despite the NX3100 is a great machine, I am not shure if I would use it for database serving, maybe for small stuff. I think it is a great option to upgrade the actual NAS.

SAN's sweet spot is databases. That is the one place that it is consistently irreplaceable.

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